> 'No, provided he is able to survive the descent of the Falls, and >the hazards of the Paths themselves, and avoid becoming lost.' > 'As I said,' said the Sorceress. This part shows the thinking of the Sorceress. She assumes that in order to navigate the paths successfully, one would require the Orb for guidance and protection or sorcery at the least and the only way you'd have access to sorcery would be to take the orb in with you. >I just wonder if the Sorceress in Green knows of some Emperor or >Empress in the past using the Orb to enter and exit the Paths. I can think of three counts against this theory. Firstly, Zerika is widely regarded to be the only living being to enter and leave the Paths. Obviously, Vlad and his friends have done it and the world is not widely aware of the fact so there may be others who have managed it as well. If an Emporer was one of those other people, though, it would have been recorded someplace and Zerika's achievement would not be as significant as it was otherwise. Secondly, both Paarfi and Vlad agree that some of the gods felt that allowing Zerika to leave would set a bad precedent. Kelchor tells Vlad as much. For that to be true, there must not have been any previous precedent set. Any other Emperor entering the Paths would have caused the same debate to take place and the issue would at least have been mentioned if not used as a precedent to apply to Zerika's case. Lastly, we've seen that sending the Orb into the Paths caused every citizen to be cut off from it. Any Emperor taking it into the Paths on a site-seeing trip would likewise be removing it from Dragaera's plane of existence and would cause an Interregnum until such time as he returned. We've had no such report of a "mini Interregnum" and the one causd by Adron's Disaster is referred to as "THE Interregnum". Based on what we know, there have not been any others. Barring a story that contradicts this, I'd say we have to assume that no Emperor has ever entered the Paths accompanied by the Orb. Without the Orb, he wouldn't be Emperor. Hence, no reigning Emperor has entered the Paths of the Dead.